Rafael Brito
Staff Engineer
Broadcom
CNCF Ambassador and co-author of Acing the CKA Exam. More than 30 years designing distributed systems, Kubernetes, and trading infrastructure, previously at StormForge, VMware, and Citigroup.
Official CNCF Community Group
The Cloud Native Hub of the Silicon Hills
Pull up a chair. We're Austin engineers — from individual contributors to CTOs — who get together for free talks on Kubernetes and the rest of the cloud native stack. No sales pitches. Just the people who run this in production, swapping war stories and helping each other out.
2016
Founded in Austin
470+
Community members
$0
Cost to attend, always
100%
Vendor-neutral content
From the meetups
In the room
This is us. A few pictures from recent nights — the talks, the hallway, and the people who make it worth showing up.
Browse all photos
From the company page
On LinkedIn
Recent posts from Cloud Native Austin. Newer notes appear first.
The team
Organizers
The volunteers you'll meet at the door, on Slack, and usually near the food. Profiles match the ones on our CNCF community group.
Harsha Thirimanna
Architect & Associate Director
WSO2
Sammy Cheung
Technology Consultant
Cloud Ultra Pro
Cristobal Nicolas Nevares
Senior Software Engineer 2
Zynga
Akshay Mittal
Staff Software Engineer
PayPal
Works on AI and ML-driven security for cloud-native systems. Speaker, published author, and co-lead of AI Collective Austin.
Myroslav Mishov
Founder & CEO
Tech Evolvers
Program co-chair for Cloud Native Austin. Seventeen years running production Linux, storage, networking, and Kubernetes, with a focus on bare metal and open control planes.
Srihari Nagaram
Staff Platform Engineer
Doma TechCo
Deepak Verma
Staff Software Engineer
PayPal
Kubestronaut working on Kubernetes and secure infrastructure. Previously a solutions architect at Apple.
Goutham Kanahasabai
Senior Software Engineer
Akamai
Builds opinionated Kubernetes platforms for Akamai Cloud.
About the group
Practitioners solving hard production problems, together
Whether you're running multi-cluster platforms at enterprise scale or still getting comfortable with the basics, you belong here. Ask the hard question. Show what you're building. Someone in the room has probably been there, and they'll tell you what actually worked.
Our mission is to elevate the local ecosystem by hosting production-grade technical talks. We welcome speakers from every background, provided they bring engineering depth rather than sales pitches — whether you're a CNCF maintainer or a local engineer with a war story to share.
Read our speaker guidelines- Free, open meetups — every skill level welcome
- Demo-focused, architecture-first talks — not sales pitches
- A Program Committee that mentors first-time speakers
- Governed by the CNCF Code of Conduct
- Recent talks: AI infrastructure, GitOps, security hardening, observability
Our operating principles
Core values & operating principles
Five commitments that shape every meetup, every sponsorship conversation, and every accepted talk.
Vendor-Neutral Excellence
We prioritize demo-focused, architectural deep-dives over product pitches. Every session is vetted against our technical standards for high-value, transferable knowledge.
Open Access, High Standards
Our meetups are FREE and open to all. Top-tier content should be accessible to everyone, regardless of budget.
Community Mentorship
We don't just book expert speakers — we build them. Our content review process helps local engineers refine proposals into world-class talks.
Transparent Sponsorship
Sponsorships are strictly at-cost to cover venue and food — never a markup — so we never price out smaller innovators or open-source vendors.
Democratized Operations
Our Program Committee governs session selection, but our broader operations are fully open — anyone who wants to help run events or source sponsors is welcome.
Join the discussion
Connect between meetups on the official CNCF Slack, channel #austin-community-group — share patterns, jobs, and ideas for future sessions.
Backed by
Sponsors & venue partners
Companies that keep our meetups free by covering venue and food, strictly at-cost.
Got a Kubernetes story worth telling?
We're accepting proposals for scaling, securing, and troubleshooting Kubernetes in production. Our Program Committee helps you polish the narrative before you take the stage.